"We're in desperate straits here. If we don't take desperate action ourselves, then we're going to perish. There's a way to drive Freebird out of there, a way to ream Freebird of its data. And we've got less than two days to do it.” Nick turned slowly to Huromonus. “Edward here is understandably reticent in accepting my suggestion. That's another reason why I asked him to have you brought here. I thought you might help me to convince him."
"Convince him of what?"
"Nick wants to do something that I am sworn to prevent,” said Huromonus quietly. “Quite simply, he wants to initiate a sequence of actions which will probably result in the destruction of most of the E-Tech data archives."
The Lion felt a frigid smile warping his face. Deep down, at that same level where his stomach pains had gripped him only a short time ago, he now sensed the beginnings of an acid laughter, a harsh blend of astonishment and disbelief.
"Destroy the E-Tech archives?! That's insane!"
"Maybe it is,” agreed Nick. “Maybe it is."
O}o{O
"Do you know what this place is?” asked Gillian.
Susan ran one palm across his bare chest while the other nestled against his cheek, a playful finger reaching out to tickle his ear. “Timmy calls it a cell of the Os/Ka/Loq."
"I know. But what exactly is that?"
Grinning, she rolled on top of him again, moved her hands to his shoulders. “What is what?"
"Os/Ka/Loq? Do you know what it means?"
She furrowed her brow, pretended to give serious consideration to his question. “I think I've figured it out. I think it means ‘the place where passion never ends.’”
He swung his arms across her back, palmed a buttock in each fist, gently pinched. “I'm being serious."
She laughed. “Why?"
"Everything comes to an end."
"You have my end,” she pointed out.
He laughed too. “What's going to happen to us after we get tired of making love? We can't stay in this bed forever."
"Why can't we?"
"You're not being rational."
"I don't have to be. You said I'm your shadow, right?"
"If I'm the light, you're the shadow. If you're the light, then I'm the shadow."
"That means we're inseparable opposites, forever attracted to each other."
He paused. “Yes. But you're forgetting about Timmy."
"No, I'll never forget about Timmy."
"He won't allow us to make love forever."
She whispered, “Maybe we can persuade him to change his mind."
Gillian sighed. “You don't understand about Timmy."
"Yes I do.” She slid a finger across the bridge of his nose. “Timmy needs us more than we need him. He needs to ... restore your Paratwa. I believe he's dedicated his life to that purpose."
He stared up at the beautiful face, saw Catharine there. “You should be afraid."
"I am. Do you want to make love again?"
"You're insatiable."
This time her frown was real. “No, not insatiable. I used to be that way. Sometimes, I used to make love to a dozen different men every week. Now I realize that what I was really doing was searching for you."
He kissed her lightly on the chin. “Timmy designed you to be my partner. You can't help feeling the way you do."
"I know. But we're halves of a whole. The same desires apply to you."
They were silent for a while. Eventually, she asked him about Empedocles.
"Is he here now?"
"He's always inside me. But right now, his presence is very weak. I can barely feel him. I believe that my monarch—"
"—Our monarch,” she corrected.
"I believe that our monarch is deliberately keeping himself in the background. He's permitting us to get to know one another."
"He's permitting us to heal."
"I suppose."
"Am I like Catharine?"
Gillian smiled. “Sometimes you're exactly like her. Other times you're not."
"How about when we make love? Am I like her then?"
"No. Then you're like you."
Susan felt pleased. “Is Catharine still ... inside of you? Is a part of her still alive?"
"No, not alive. But the interlace is still intact. What Catharine was ... her potential ... it still exists. And of course there are my memories of her.” He paused. “They used to flow over me sometimes until I felt as if I were going to drown."
"And now?"
And now, for the first time in ages, I can remember her without being overwhelmed by pain. He kissed Susan lightly on the chin. “I want us to be together always.” A rush of feeling ascended his spine—the distant Empedocles expressing his pleasure.
Susan nodded. “It's crazy, but I want it too. I keep trying to tell myself that this whole concept of becoming a tway...” She squeezed his shoulders. “It's insane! It makes no sense whatsoever! It's the most obscenely ridiculous idea I could ever imagine!"
"And you want it,” said Gillian.
"I want it more than anything else I've ever wanted in my life. My body wants it."
"No choice."
"I know. My body demands fulfillment."
"Timmy designed you that way."
"I know that too.” She hesitated. “I always wanted to have choice. By the time my parents died ... by the time they committed suicide ... I had no choices left to me. Everything was decided for me.” New insight flowed through her. “That's the real reason I tried to have sex with so many different men. I could choose. I could keep on choosing. I never had to stop. I could always have the freedom to make a new decision about a new lover."
"That's not freedom."
"I know. I know that now."
"Those men ... were they pain relievers as well?”
She stroked his arm. “Yes. That too. They made life bearable."
Gillian came to a realization, sharing it with her even as he formulated its parameters. “The Ash Ock ... that's one of their great powers."
"What is?"
"They not only possess the ability to be conscious of all these inner drives that tways—or humans—are usually unaware of, but they truly understand the inherent multiplicity of behaviors which, taken together, define intelligent creatures.” He struggled to make himself clear. “You were having sex with all those men for different reasons. On one level—a physical plane—you were using them, at least to some extent, as pain relievers. Simultaneously, on an emotional level, you were doing it so that you could always, ostensibly, have the power to choose."
"All part of the same thing,” she suggested. “Just different aspects of my pre-Timmy neurotic behavior."
"But the Ash Ock ... they're always aware of the interrelationship of those levels. They're always conscious of what we—tways or humans—are usually forgetting. That's why they can generate such complex plans. That's why they're always doing things for more than one particular reason. They see it all. They don't have a subconsciousness—at least, not as we understand it. We have levels of consciousness. They don't. For them, it's one great arena, viewed from end to end within the same sweep of vision.” He paused. “I don't believe my monarch ever dreams."
Susan studied a dimple on his neck. “Perhaps when your monarch is fully awake, his tways are his dreams."
"Yes. That's possible.” He stared up at her, suddenly seeing her face as a golden mask, covering his own. It was a vision—an iconic image of the way things once were—and the way they would be once again. Two tways, able to see themselves from the inside and from the outside at the same time, able to mirror each other. Ash Ock consciousness. Ash Ock Paratwa.
The vision departed, leaving in its wake a fresh storm of speculations. His thoughts turned to the assassin—the tripartite.
"The Honshu massacre ... where you ran into the killer. I think I understand something. You always thought it was a coincidence that you were there, right?"
"Yes. Are you suggesting that it wasn't?"
"I believe that the tripartite wanted you there. It was supposed to kill you. An Ash Ock—Sappho, perhaps—ordered your death. But things went wrong. You were too fast. You got away."
She frowned. “The whole thing was just a terrible coincidence. I must have met one of its tways somewhere. It made inadvertent eye contact with me—"
"No!” said Gillian, bursting with revelations. “No, the eye contact was deliberate! We always thought that you must have somehow seen more than you realized in that terminal. Because of that, the assassin wanted you dead—at any cost.
"But that wasn't it at all! You were supposed to die in that terminal because you were the grandniece of an Irryan councilor—to be precise, because you were Inez Hernandez's only living relative!"
"But why?"
"I don't know,” he admitted. “Not exactly. But I think I have a general idea. The Paratwa have been manipulating the Irryan Council, trying to alter their attitudes, trying to make sure that they're in the right frame of mind ... for something.” His palms tightened on her buttocks, squeezing her in the desperate hope that flesh would provide the final answer. It was all there, just at the edge of consciousness, the full intricacy of an Ash Ock scheme waiting to be plucked.
"The assassin tried to kill me in order to somehow manipulate Aunt Inez? That doesn't make much sense."
"Considered by itself, maybe not. But considered as one small aspect of their plan, it might make a great deal of sense."
"Then why would the assassin have made eye contact with me? I mean, if it was expecting me to be there, it should not have acted surprised...” She hesitated, filled with new doubts.
"Yes!” urged Gillian. “Think it through!"
"All right, I must have met one of the tways before Honshu. But that part I already knew.” She frowned. “I don't understand..."
Gillian sensed the sudden intuition vaulting through her, perceiving it as a clenching of her buttocks. He grinned wildly. “We had it ass backwards, so to speak."
She whispered, “Honshu wasn't the first time the assassin tried to kill me. It tried once before that. But something went wrong. It never got its chance."
"Right!"
"So it arranged for the Honshu massacre ... it learned that I would be passing through the terminal—it scheduled my death along with the other ones!"
"That's right—a Paratwa assassin, acting under the multiple-objective commands of its Ash Ock master!"
"It made eye contact with me—"
"—because it wanted you to know! It wanted the satisfaction of your fear! It wanted you to realize that this was not some complete stranger about to end your life. This was someone you were acquainted with—"
"—someone whom I must have offended! He was angry with me! There was the satisfaction of vengeance in those eyes!"
"Which you never saw at the time, never realized—"
"—Until now! He was ... my lover. No! Not my lover, he was—"
"—A would-be suitor. He had intended to be just another one of Susan Quint's countless seductions—"
"—That's how he was planning to kill me the first time! A rape-murder!"
"And when he failed to seduce you that first time, was denied his opportunity to kill you—and then failed again in the terminal—he sent those two corrupt E-Tech Security officers to your apartment to finish the job—"
"—They were going to rape me! One of them told the other to drag me into my bedroom so that they could ‘do it on the bed!’ The sick bastard! He wanted those officers to finish me the same way he had originally intended!"
An undercurrent of emotion, gilded with anger, swept through Susan, and then suddenly she was lost in a maelstrom of light and shadow. She saw herself, saw her own face, observed that face staring up at herself. Her conceptual framework—her own sense of being—threatened to disintegrate, blasted by the consequences of this impossible vision. Deep within, she longed for that collapse even as another part of her retreated in terror.
Fear triumphed. With a violence rooted in desperation, she pushed off Gillian, lunged from the bed. Her left foot caught her right one. Off balance, she stumbled into an aqua-green stalagmite serving as a bedside table, grabbing at its uneven edge in a frantic attempt to regain equilibrium. The stalagmite did not cooperate, it bent in the middle like a rubber hose, sending its twin beakers of ice water splashing across the floor. She landed on the fresh puddle, butt first.
The commotion of her ungainly movement. The noise of it. The feel of her bare ass resting in a lake of frigid water. Gillian laughing, amused by her clumsiness. Those things should have annoyed her, embarrassed her. But she welcomed them. They were of the senses. They were real.
Gillian continued to chuckle. “That was a cute display. Any particular reason for it?"
She stood up, drew a deep breath.
"I was inside you,” she blurted out.
His smile faded. “Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
He tried to sympathize. “The first time ... it must be a terrifying experience. Becoming a tway..."
She stood there in front of him, naked, arms folded across her breasts, trying to shield herself.
"As time goes by, it will become easier,” he offered, feeling oddly saddened, knowing that he was mourning the loss of her innocence. The process of cojoining had begun. From now on, they would begin to count time together. From now on, their intimacy would lead inexorably toward the coalescence of a Paratwa. Those precious moments of being able to come together—as discrete entities—were gone forever. The purity of separateness was no more.
"What now?” she asked, recovering some of her composure but still feeling helpless, like a little girl lost.
"The second time will be easier,” said Gillian.
His voice soothed her. His words did not.
He said, “It's this place that brings us together. This cell of the Os/Ka/Loq. Inside this vessel, thousands of feet under the Atlantic Ocean, the purities have been maintained.” He did not fully understand the meaning of what he was saying, but he knew he was speaking truth.
"The purities,” Susan whispered. She turned slowly, gazed the strange wavering walls, at the profusion of stalagmites, some with obvious functions, other melding into electronic arrays whose purposes could only be guessed at.
He held out his arms. “Come to me again."
She took a hesitant step toward him. “I have no choice."
"No choice."
O}o{O
The prime data-retrieval section, located deep in the first-floor vaults of E-Tech's Irryan headquarters, was a small circular room jammed from floor to ceiling with computer equipment. On several occasions over the years, the Lion had been given tours of the more publicly-accessible areas of the massive vaults. But until now, he had never been inside this section. Nick referred to it as the “heart and soul of the archives."
The midget sat before him at one of the consoles. A trio of E-Tech programmers were in the room as well, two males and a female, all incredibly youthful, all three faces displaying that same passionate dedication that had underscored Adam Lu Sang's spirit. Cheerleaders, Nick called these three. They buzzed through the cramped chamber, checking readouts, accessing information, painting multicolor data portraits across monitor screens with a nimbleness that the Lion found oddly disturbing.
He suspected that what annoyed him was their intense perfectionism, their focusing of raw energies into microlaser precision, their concentration on the immediacy of the moment to such a degree that they were sure to miss the overall picture, the larger perspective. But he reminded himself that these three had been Adam Lu Sang's friends, as well as early supporters of the slain programmer's theory that a sunsetter was responsible for the data destruction within the archives. And now, the youthful trio remained the only high-level programmers whom Edward Huromonus had been willing to trust for the upcoming task. The remainder of the vault personnel, including many of Doyle Blumhaven's appointees, had be
en denied access.
Trusted security guards, with orders to use deadly force, had been posted outside this prime data-retrieval section to insure that Huromonus's dictates were obeyed.
"All set!” hollered one of the programmers.
"Fault lines correlated,” added another.
"Archives—get ready for your first trembler!” chortled the third.
The Lion sighed. The trio also reminded him of pampered colonials—rich juvenilia, mainly—who hired Costeaus to take them into the outer reaches of colonial space to “experience” adventure. Earlier, he had mentioned his comparison to Nick.
"Nah,” the midget had replied. “They're more like cheerleaders."
The name had stuck.
"Eddie's here,” announced Nick, glancing at a security monitor.
The door opened, admitting Edward Huromonus. The E-Tech director looked inordinately cheery. “I've got good news."
Nick raised his eyebrows. The cheerleaders froze en masse, then, in tandem, turned to Huromonus. The Lion was reminded of a cluster of ancient radar dishes, all swiveling to track the same source. Three sets of ears locked in on their target, preparing to receive virgin data.
"I correlated your latest sunsetter data,” began Huromonus, “with information that my people managed to wring from one of Doyle's former compatriots in E-Tech Security. This Blumhaven crony is currently facing a host of serious criminal charges. He has been persuaded that cooperation is the most proper course of action."
"Change of heart, huh?” quipped Nick.
"Indeed. And from what he has told us, it appears that those weird trails left by the sunsetter at multiple nexus points throughout the archives were created for the purpose of covering its tracks."
"I told you,” said one or the cheerleaders, wagging his finger at the others. “The sunsetter scampered outside the archives!"
"Yes,” confirmed Huromonus. “For a brief period, following the Honshu massacre, the sunsetter must have utilized one of these nexus points to exit the archives and enter the transit computer net. After accomplishing its task there—and before returning to the archives—it deliberately made contact with a slew of other nexus junctions."
The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga) Page 22